


Raspberry Vodka and Synesthesia

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: Homestuck, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Dave officially does not care, F/M, Gen, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Pre-Avengers (2012), Terezi is a manipulative little shit, Tony had issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, for our troll readers: </p><p>In which drunken inventor Tony Stark finds himself sharing a jail cell with bored amateur legislacerator Terezi Pyrope and her human boyfriend, former God of Time Dave Strider. Includes 2 NYPD officers, one flash-forward, and triggering amounts of sarcasm and psychoanalysis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raspberry Vodka and Synesthesia

**Author's Note:**

> To Megan, for your b-day!

Tony Stark was no stranger to the esteemed state of being extremely drunk; in fact, so far as he was concerned, Tony and drunkeness were in a comitted and heartfelt relationship. Nor was he unfamiliar with the many consequences of getting completely wasted, from embarrassing videos on the internet to waking up in bed with someone you didn't recognize.

Such it was that Anthony Edward Stark, unruly inventor and owner of StarkIndustries, age 25, found himself being manhandled into a small, slightly grungy drunk tank somewhere in downtown New York City by a blank-faced cop, trying to pretend that the alcohol wasn't attempting to wear off and his hangover wasn't setting in.

The clang of the iron bars sliding shut was enough to make Tony flinch, putting a hand to his head and mumbling something about lawyers under his breath. The room looked less than clean or sanitary, but the benches along the walls were the only places to sit and it wasn't like there was much more he could do to ruin this suit, so Tony just stumbled over to a wall and didn't so much sit down as topple onto a bench and not pick himself up. He couldn't say with any confidence, but he was pretty certain no one would notice he was missing and/or bother to do anything about it until at least the next morning, so he had a good... five hours at least, until Obie sent a guy to come bail him out. Probably more, Obie had gotten into the habit recently of letting him sit for a while after he got himself into trouble and ended up intoxicated and in some variety of a cell, trying to teach him a lesson or something.

It must have been a pretty quiet night for this little district of the NYPD, because the large cell was basically empty. The only other occupants were two kids in the far corner, a boy leaning against the wall and what might have been a girl crouched on the bench. Other than that, Tony had the cell all to himself, and he leaned back against the grimy wall with a sigh as he settled in to wait for Obie to figure out he was missing and bail him out already.

One of the kids in the corner - the one on the bench whose face he couldn't even see with the hood pulled up - shifted and turned to their companion, a blond high school kid who was apparently enough of a hipster douche to wear shades indoors.

"Smells like money. And booze. And your brother."

There was a pause.

"...what?" Tony said, sitting up and squinting at the girl - the voice sounded like a girl's, sort of - in the hoodie. The girl turned her face to look at Tony.

"Oh, look. A new friend. Hello there, fellow jailbird, fancy meeting you here," the girl said, "You smell like a drunk." Her face was still shadowed under her hoodie, so Tony couldn't exactly see her expression. Her voice was blunt and neutral. While Tony's brain was contemplating this, his mouth - as usual - completely disconnected and started rambling.

"I _am_ a drunk, this is a drunk tank, did you expect an upstanding member of society, I mean what did you expect, what the hell else would I be doing, drunks belong in drunk tanks, that's how it works in the real world," Tony slurred.

The girl cocked her head to the side like a curious animal. Her tone was wickedly innocent and playful, like a cat with a mouse trapped between its paws. "Is it _really_ , Mr. Upstanding-member-of-society? That's interesting. Because I think that you do not even slightly belong here."

Tony gave her a _look_ \- as much as a guy who been drinking long enough that he couldn't remember how long he'd been drinking could, in fact, give a look to anyone - and rolled his eyes expressively. "There are words to express the amount of stupid in that sentence, I'm just not sure what they are at the moment, they are escaping my mind, right now. Because, I am, you know, _drunk_ , I am proper drunk, so I am in a drunk tank," Tony emphasized. He did not feel nearly as drunk as he wished he was at the moment. But hey, he wasn't exactly getting out of here anytime soon, so his options right now mainly consisted of staring at the wall or talking to the weird chick in the drunk tank, and he was actually bored enough already to do the second.

"Exactly how drunk are you, Mr. Proper Drunk?" the girl said. Underneath her hood, Tony swore he could see a predatory grin. The boy shifted and turned his head slightly to look at his friend. His eyes were still hidden behind his glasses.

"What the hell, Terezi, what are you doing?" he said in an incredulous voice. The girl tilted her head again, and her hood slid back just enough for Tony to see opaque red sunglasses - great, more hipster shit - and what he was very sure this time was an oddly terrifying Cheshire-cat type grin.

"I'm bored, Dave," the girl crooned, "He's interesting."

"Really," the blond kid said slowly. The boy raised an eyebrow, but after a moment leaned his head back against the wall and relaxed in a way that seemed to say 'I'm going to sleep and don't care either way, so carry on tormenting the weird drunk.' Tony felt like this was the point where he should probably jump in.

"Are you coming on to me?" Tony said loudly. "Because you can not even be legal, I swear, and also I'm not sure I have a type but I'm pretty sure you're not my type, and taking advantage of a drunk person is kind of a no-no either way." The girl made an odd choking sound. It took him a second to realize it was a laugh.

"Oh, no," she said, "Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Don't Belong, you are not my idea of a good time." Her voice turned decidedly dangerous, and he felt a shiver go up his spine. "You couldn't handle me at all, poor little thing." The boy snorted quietly, proving he was paying attention; Tony wondered what was so funny.

"For your information, I am everyone's type, and you keep saying that thing, the one that makes no sense at all," Tony informed her. The girl lifted her head in a challenge. The shape underneath her hood shifted in odd ways.

"Which thing would that be?" she asked.

"The you should not be here, in the drunk tank, despite the fact that you are drunk thing, that thing, it's a thing and you keep saying and I think you missed the point of logic here," Tony said.

"I speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," the girl said, "You, Mr. Booze and Motor Oil, are telling yourself untruths, and they smell like self-deceit and raspberry vodka."

Tony honestly did not know how to respond to that.

"Okay, for one," he slurred out after a minute, "raspberry vodka is amazing, don't knock it until you've tried it, and secondly also what the hell."

"You're lying to yourself," the girl enunciated slowly, leaning back against the wall, "And it smells like self-deceit. Very dark chocolate-y. Goes well with the raspberry and vodka part." Her smile flashed beneath her hood again. "Delicious, really; I almost feel like I should thank you for being so screwy in such a tasty way."

Tony decided that the best approach to communication here firmly consisted of ignoring almost everything she said. "No, no, I got the vodka part," Tony assured her, "I meant the untruths bullshit, because I have the feeling you are talking out of your ass, I have exactly zero idea what you are talking about there."

"Precisely." She sounded entirely too smug, Tony thought, for a girl sitting in a jail cell. "You don't know what I'm talking about, because you're telling yourself untruths-"

"-raspberries and dark chocolate, I get it," Tony interrupted.

Her grin was positively shark like, now. "Do you get it, Mr. Dark-Chocolate" she said slyly, "Do you _really_ , now?"

"For Chrissake, just ask her already," the boy cut in abruptly, not moving at all, "or she'll just keep being an ass about it until you do." The girl just grinned.

"Fine, then," Tony grumbled self-righteously, "Enlighten me, O mysterious oracle who I met ten minutes ago by virture of sharing a jail cell, and thus are completely and totally accurate and correct, because, you know, shadowy kids who think mental issues taste like dark chocolate cooling their heels in an inner city drunk tank know everything, absolutely, everyone knows that, why don't I - _even slightly_ \- belong, after being dragged in for being a public and drunken nuisance, in a jail cell in New York City." The response was not at all what he was expecting.

The girl rocked back on the bench and _cackled_ , honest to God cackled, like the Wicked Witch of the West, Tony had not known people could actually do that. Ordinary people did not do that. Her friend, the blond kid, tilted his head like he was rolling his eyes behind his shades and spoke.

"Nope, nevermind, you do not want her doing this thing, you do not want her dicking around with your head, you really do not," the kid said, completely deadpan and resigned. And of course, because he said that, Tony had to do it.

"Screw it," Tony said gaily, "Screw it, I am drunk, I am completely wasted, I have absolutely no where to be, let's hear it, what's so strange about a drunk in a crappy little NYPD drunk tank, psychoanalyze me go, I'm curious, really, make my day."  
  
Tony was really starting to dislike that creepy grin of hers. He couldn't even see it properly, and it still terrified the shit out of him. "Oh, I will," the girl began, "I really will.

"You don't just smell like booze, Mr. Nowhere-To-Be, you smell like _fancy_ booze, silk and satin, douchy cologne - you couldn't smell more rich if you tried, Moneybags," she said, scornfully amused. "What's a rich kid like you doing drunk off his bulge and cooling his heels in a cell? I should warn you, lies taste like blueberries, and I've always hated them."

"Hey, you don't know, I'm rich, I'm brilliant," Tony flashed a sardonic grin, "I'm oh so pretty, maybe I'm out for a little fun, and also I don't know who you're calling kid, I am not twelve, I am actually old enough to drink, unlike some people in this drunk tank, so you can just shut your face, Miss Give-random-strangers-crappy-nicknames, and also finally I have had it up to here-" Tony gestured vaguely somewhere a foot above his head, "-and beyond with your creepiness, what is with the freaky smell-your-lies kind of synth... synesethene... color-tasty-smelling shit." Because there was a certain point at which even a very drunk Tony could no longer ignore the truly insane shit.

For about three seconds, Tony thought that his particular brand of spew-words-until-people-walk-away had actually managed to shut the creepy lady up.

Then she slumped back against the wall and began to laugh so hard it sounded like she was going to be sick. Actually laughing, not the witchy cackle, but laughing like he had just told the funniest joke she had ever heard that didn't end in dead babies or something. It was a surprising nice laugh, for such a grating person, but still. She was _wheezing_ , she was laughing so hard, that's how funny she found all this, it was completely unfair. Tony felt a bit put out, actually. He _liked_ that technique of shutting people up, it was his favorite one, he had _practiced_.

"Oh, crazy new friend, I am so _glad_ I met you, your insanity truly makes incarceration bearable," she said gleefully once she had the breath, "Well done, trying to distract me with all your delicious sour-apple misdirection, but the pursuit of truth is not so easily distracted, Mr. Booze-and-Blueberries."

Tony just drawled, "Glad we cleared that up, thank you weird sniffy lady, I always wanted to know that misdirection smells like sour-apple. My favorite flavor, too, let's do it some more."

"Oh, no, no, no, crazy friend, not tonight we won't," the 'weird sniffy lady' said in a voice of genuine happiness, "It is the middle of the night, you sir are 'proper drunk', we are sitting in a jail cell for a good portion of the forseeable future, I am bored, your pain is entertaining, and truth will prevail in all matters of law, justice, and psychoanalysis."

"Riiiight," Tony muttered, "Yay."

The girl grinned like she hadn't heard him at all. "You make bad choices."

"Most people pretty widely regard being drunk on a Tuesday as bad life choices, yes, thank you for putting that out there where exactly no one is surprised by it, I feel so much better now," Tony said dryly. "Should I lie down on the bench, if we're turning this into therapy now?"

"Technically, it's Wednesday," the other kid interjected in a monotone.

"Technically neither you nor your girlfriend are my therapist," Tony pointed out, "so you can shove it up your ass."

The response to that was a carefully noncommittal middle finger and another cackle.

"I'm not done yet, Booze-and-Blueberries," the girl said smugly, which frankly gave Tony shivers. "You're rich, smart, pretty - all the odds stacked in your favor, right from the start. You could be on top of the world right now. Instead, you're sitting in a crappy jail in a suit because you've decided you're a drunk. You make bad life choices, and it doesn't take eyes to see what you are. You're a coward who's flushed his life down the load gaper and a fool who's too lazy to fix it."

The cell was very, very quiet for a moment. "Geez, tell us what you really think, why don't you," Tony drawled, suddenly struggling to think clearly through the lingering haze of the alcohol.

"I think you are broken, Mr. Licorice Despair. And the worst part is that you're still pretending that you're the only one who knows it." And she said every bit of it with a smile.

"The question was rhetorical, you crazy bitch," Tony snapped.

"Oops," she said mockingly, "My mistake. Here I though you wanted to hear the truth."

What Tony wanted right now was to slap her. He was pretty sure, however, that that was not a good idea, though he kept loosing track of the reasons why not.

"You do not belong here," the girl continued, "You keep saying you do, but rich drunk boys don't belong in grimy jail cells. All the self-destructive things you're doing to yourself, all the shitty ways you're letting yourself fall apart-"

"Fuck you, what do you know-" Tony snarled, unreasoningly angry

"-if you belong," the girl taunted in a rusty, self-satisfied purr, "Then you can make believe that it's just who you are, and that you aren't just putting bandaids over cracks. I know what I observe, Mr. Booze-and-Blueberries, and I know what I smell. You are a coward, you are broken, and you are on a very rapid downward spiral, straight to rock bottom. And you won't even admit it."

"...you are a sadistic whore," Tony said, voice shaking with anger.

"Such words, Mr. Blueberries. I'm flattered, but you're not my type. Better sadistic than weak, anyway," she said with a grin, "Believe or not, you'll thank me for this someday."

"You-" Tony was just about ready to get up and actually find something to throw at her, and she was rising too, her grin almost giddy at the idea of a fight, when the third party in their cell reached out - lightning fast - to grab his friend's arm.

"Terezi," he said, "Cut it out. I don't want to get knifed in the kidneys because you wanted to taunt a drunk for having mental issues and shitty choices. It wouldn't actually kill me, but that's not the point."

The chick cackled again. "Poor sweet Dave," she simpered, "If you insist. Dead Daves are the enemy, after all."

"Damn straight," the kid said, dropping her arm. The two of them seemed to consider the matter finished. Tony, on the other hand, probably still would have considered strangling her with his bare heads if he hadn't heard, at that exact moment, the sound of footsteps echoing down the halls of the cellblock. He expected Obie, or maybe some parental figure come to pick these two up.

He did not expect an officer - well, that part he expected, yes - accompanied by a petite teenage girl with short, ice blond hair and a remarkably stern look on her face. Of all the people, that was not what he would have thought.

"Dave, Terezi," the new girl sighed in resignation from the other side of the bars, "When I said 'Have fun, don't get arrested,' I was attempting to be humorous."

"No, you weren't," the obnoxious girl in the hoodie informed her cheerfully, standing up and dusting herself off as if she hadn't been about to get into a brawl with a drunken adult less than a minute ago. The new girl - who, Tony realised, bore a startling resemblance to the teenage boy in the cell, right down to the shapes of their faces - just sighed deeply in frustration.

"No, I wasn't," the blond girl agreed, "But I deeply wish I had been." With her wordless gesture, the officer opened the cell door and gruffly ushered the two teens within outside. The boy was blank-faced as always, but nodded to the girl who was, in close quarters, at least a cousin of his, if not a sibling.

"Nice of you to bail us out, Rose," he drawled. "After three hours."

His sister grimaced. "I was busy." The subtle emphasis on the last word probably meant something, because the kid just dropped the subject. Their third companion, the obnoxious brat who's face Tony still hadn't really seen, was almost out of the cell door when Tony, through some strange instinct, stopped her.

"I'm not weak."

The girl stopped, and turned around slowly, tilting her head back in a superior way. When she held herself like that, Tony could almost see under her hood. If it shifted back any farther, he'd be able to see the face she was hiding.

"Don't like being called weak and broken, Mr. Licorice?" she purred, red glasses expressionless. "Then _don't be broken_." With one last condescending tilt of her chin and a final mocking grin, she spun around and returned to her friends. The three of them left as quickly as they came.

And Tony Stark was left sitting in a grimy jail cell contemplating the instability of his own mental state, his desire for more booze, and why in the hell he had just spent an hour talking to a girl with grey skin, fangs, and goddamn horns.

* * *

 

Tony Stark was no stranger to the esteemed state of being a bit drunk; though he no longer used his beloved booze as a method of self-medication, he had to admit that it did make meetings with Director Fury slightly more tolerable (when Steve and/or Coulson would let him, of course). Not by much, though, there was only so much you could do to make bureacracy tolerable, even when it usually concerned the next great threat to the world and the universe at large.

Such it was that Anthony Edward Stark, superhero and genius, age 42, found himself sitting in a small conference room in SHIELD HQ along with the rest of his team, mildly buzzed, doing his best to ignore the unflattering pictures of Director Fury that Clint was already drawing on his copy of the mission file, and paying no attention whatsoever.

"So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this meeting is about the impending end of the world," Tony said, slouching in his chair with his feet on the table like a true professional. Steve gave him a look; Tony ignored it.

" _This meeting_ ," Fury stressed with his usual attitude of restrained, well, fury. "Is concerning a new and ongoing possible threat to SHIELD, the United States of America, and the world at large. If impending doom will allow you to focus, you are welcome to think of it in those terms."

"Carry on then," Tony said, waving a hand impudently. He wasn't planning on paying attention, anyway. Blah, blah, rogue group, blah, blah, possible terrorist cell, blah, blah, unknown and highly varied powers, blah, blah, blah...

Or at least, he wasn't, until Fury put up one of SHIELD's few pictures of the rogue group on the screen, and Tony was face to face with some naggingly familiar faces. The picture was of a group of kids - teenagers, really - blurred as they ran from unknown pursuers. The leader of the line was a kid with dark hair and glasses, followed by a boy with short, ice blond hair and shades. But it was the girl at the back of the line - the alien girl, with grey skin and orange horns, whose eyes were hidden by red shades and whose mouth was a laughing shark's grin - that made him really feel like he'd been socked in the gut. The memories of a drunken stay in a city jail almost two decades struggled to make themselves heard.

He hadn't realized he was on his feet, staring at the screen like he had seen a ghost, until Steve caught his arm with a concerned "Tony?"

Tony barely heard him. There was really only one thing on his mind at the moment.

"Son of a bitch."


End file.
